is RIM "dead man walking"?

I think the Nexus line is aimed as much at Europe as the US. The price there is fantastic, and LTE/CDMA a non-issue. In the US, I think this is mostly aimed at just growing the prepaid market and putting pressure on Verizon etc. to play nicer with the Nexus line going forward.

No disagreement, really.

I'm just pointing out that if the goal is 100 million sales, then the US market has to be hit a lot harder than the product currently is designed to do.

In the last week, BlackBerry 10 achieved Lab Entry with more than 50 carriers - a key step in our preparedness for the launch of BlackBerry 10 in the first quarter of 2013. We made this commitment during our recent results conference call and we have delivered. This process will continue in the coming months as more carriers around the world formally evaluate the devices and our brand new software.

I think the Nexus line is aimed as much at Europe as the US. The price there is fantastic, and LTE/CDMA a non-issue. In the US, I think this is mostly aimed at just growing the prepaid market and putting pressure on Verizon etc. to play nicer with the Nexus line going forward.

No disagreement, really.

I'm just pointing out that if the goal is 100 million sales, then the US market has to be hit a lot harder than the product currently is designed to do.

To be fair, assume 30m in the US, 30m in the EU, 15m in Japan, and 25m around the rest of the world.

But the point is, at 100 mill (30 mill in the US), you have to think a lot harder about the LTE question because (one presumes) a decent fraction of the available demographic thinks it needs it whether it really is useful or not. Similarly with any US-only issue like CDMA.

Only 30 million a year in the US alone. Are you picking this stupidly high number so that when it doesn't sell that many you will be able to say it failed?

Do you really think they are going to sell $30 billion of phones in a year from a standing start? Do you not realise that if they did that it would almost certainly mean a) they would have to cut into the iPhone sales, and b) they would be on a trajectory that would make Apple's recent success look mild.

It took Apple nearly 4 years to clock up 100 million sales.

I think Google and LG will be delighted if they can match the success of the Nexus 7.

Only 30 million a year in the US alone. Are you picking this stupidly high number so that when it doesn't sell that many you will be able to say it failed?

No. I'm not disingenuous or whatnot.

I pick this stupidly high number because it's actually a reasonable number of units to ship. Note that I break down by region (US, Japan, Europe, etc) so that even if Google chooses not to distribute/advertise/sell into, say, Japan, we can still evaluate it's relative impact in the market.

So if they ship 2.5m a month in either the US or Europe, both markets that Google Play currently serves, then we have a reasonable expectation that hadGoogle Play served Asia, India, Brazil, Russia, etc, you can make a reasonable case that this phone could have hit 100m worldwide in a 12 month span.

Also, I understand it might take 2 or 3 quarters at this price to hit 2.5m a month in the US or Europe.

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Do you really think they are going to sell $30 billion of phones in a year from a standing start? Do you not realise that if they did that it would almost certainly mean a) they would have to cut into the iPhone sales, and b) they would be on a trajectory that would make Apple's recent success look mild.

They have to start somewhere. Given they only support Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, US, and UK directly, and hopefully have partners to cover the rest of Europe/the world, I am merely proposing a benchmark by which to gauge the "popularity" of the device.

To be fair, this is a similar benchmark that RIM needs to have, too.

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It took Apple nearly 4 years to clock up 100 million sales.

I think Google and LG will be delighted if they can match the success of the Nexus 7.

Sure. If, to be on topic, RIM can clock 2.5m a month in the US, or Europe, or wherever, of their BB10 phone then I think you can say they're doing okay, even if it takes 6 months to hit that rate.

Now, if after 6 months RIM and Google are only selling 500k a month in the US, or Europe, or whatever, then we know they're not doing so well (or not advertising enough, or whatever).

OC, Google has a long way to go to build the Nexus brand. It is not there yet. Normal people just don't know about it. It needs advertising and marketing, and the carriers won't be be footing the bill. It's unclear just how much Google is willing to spend (quite reasonably, since few if any of the Nexus products make them large amounts of money, as far I can tell).

So, no, the Nexus 4, even at the great and potentially disruptive price it's being offered at, won't sell anywhere close to 100M. That's a magnitude of order off into theoretical fantasyland. The real world is dictated by carriers and the products they support and push.

re BB OS 10 - latest video looks interesting, some aspects look thoughtful and appealing, but I will be astonished if it's anything other than a raw 1.0 with many, many omissions and glitches. They have just too much ground to cover against the competition, under countless management mishaps and a deadly sinking ship morale, and their core userbase is being whittled down daily. And only then do the quixotic struggles to build the ecosystem begin. The odds of success are terribly low.

The real world is dictated by carriers and the products they support and push.

The US, and a few other developed markets such as Japan, are dictated by carriers. In most developing markets, the carriers just sell the plumbing/sim-cards and have about as much influence on the handset choice as your ISP or cable company have on your choice of computer or TV set. Most European markets are somewhere in between.

@lookmark: agreed. I just mean Google could sell 100m of the N4; it's not crippled or handicapped except by being a Nexus. We're it a Galaxy, iPhone, or BlackBerry it should be hitting 100m annually at the $299 price for $600 HW.

The real world is dictated by carriers and the products they support and push.

I think, though, the real world isn't stable and will change.

At least for me (and I think for many others) the real strangle hold was preventing high end phone from falling into non-contract hands.

I write about this little revolution (or revolution wannabe) called Republic Wireless that also tried to end-run the carriers. Don't know how it is doing, lost track.

What I do know is that if it had the N4 and not some midrange crap phone with mediocre specs, I'd have gone with them.

It will take a while for consumers to get comfortable with this. But, I don't think there's a tremendous amount of love for any of the carriers and once people have a generation or maybe two of smart phones behind them, they are going to tire of all these contract games. AT&T is even out ahead of this with their own Go phone. So, at least one of them is anticipating change.

It will take a while, but if Google persists, I think it will change.

I do agree that 100 m handsets is very optimistic for N4.

But even 10 million of them could create a heck of a lot of word of mouth and forever change the conversation. It will form an existence proof that you can end-run the carriers.

I suspect a lot of ordinary people, the same ones that went with MCI, are already looking for this.

The current carrier subsidy is changing, I don't think you can argue that. The pertinent question is if RIM will be able to capitalize on that due to their lower data usage and generally cheaper phones. Could happen. But a $400 top end Android phone is an issue for RIM, Apple, and all other high end Android phone makers. Should be interesting.

The current carrier subsidy is changing, I don't think you can argue that. The pertinent question is if RIM will be able to capitalize on that due to their lower data usage and generally cheaper phones. Could happen. But a $400 top end Android phone is an issue for RIM, Apple, and all other high end Android phone makers. Should be interesting.

Not sure the lower data usage is going to be that interesting in the long run; I pay $35 / month for free minutes, SMS, MMS and 10 GB of data (and this deal included getting a Galaxy Nexus). Also, AFAIK the lower data usage only pertains to a few internet activities, and only when they go through RIM's servers. And do we know if BB10 will still use the same protocols to support this?

Agree that data compression is no longer a big selling point, most of the bandwidth is video and pictures, which are already compressed. I'm pretty sure RIM is not using the NOC to compress web access with BB10 because of this, but only using it for BBM, cloud services like BB Protect, and email push. Don't quote me on that though cause I don't think anyone outside of RIM knows the final answer for sure.

What do you call announcing a launch event 79 days in advance that will not actually see the launch of any product?

It's called trying to keep the BB users from buying something else over the holiday season My bet would be on being able to walk into a store and buy one by the end of February at the latest, with a good chance of getting one withing two weeks of the announcement event.

So have the goal posts officially moved in the Battlefront and the new RIM is dead and BBOS10 phones will never actually come out theory now changed to something like: "RIM is dead if they don't ship over 3 million of the new phones in their first quarter of availability"? Cause shipping 2-3 million would sure help their bottom line.

What do you call announcing a launch event 79 days in advance that will not actually see the launch of any product?

It's called trying to keep the BB users from buying something else over the holiday season My bet would be on being able to walk into a store and buy one by the end of February at the latest, with a good chance of getting one withing two weeks of the announcement event.

So have the goal posts officially moved in the Battlefront and the new RIM is dead and BBOS10 phones will never actually come out theory now changed to something like: "RIM is dead if they don't ship over 3 million of the new phones in their first quarter of availability"? Cause shipping 2-3 million would sure help their bottom line.

Just asking what the conventional wisdom is now is all...

I expect it to play out like Palm. The stock price is already rising from record lows prior to launch. A flurry of reviews will be good, if not great. Initial sales will go to enthusiasts, but the general public will largely ignore the new devices. The death spiral will resume, accelerating quickly.

What do you call announcing a launch event 79 days in advance that will not actually see the launch of any product?

It's called trying to keep the BB users from buying something else over the holiday season My bet would be on being able to walk into a store and buy one by the end of February at the latest, with a good chance of getting one withing two weeks of the announcement event.

So have the goal posts officially moved in the Battlefront and the new RIM is dead and BBOS10 phones will never actually come out theory now changed to something like: "RIM is dead if they don't ship over 3 million of the new phones in their first quarter of availability"? Cause shipping 2-3 million would sure help their bottom line.

Just asking what the conventional wisdom is now is all...

The product will debut as planned, customers will find nothing compelling about it in comparison to iOS/Android, and it will die in 7-18 months like Palm before it.

Quick question but I'm not getting it? Why is it a leak when the CEO of the company is using his own device at an event? Was he trying to hide it? Did you expect him to use an iPhone? Why does he have to be secretive about it? What am I missing?

Quick question but I'm not getting it? Why is it a leak when the CEO of the company is using his own device at an event? Was he trying to hide it? Did you expect him to use an iPhone? Why does he have to be secretive about it? What am I missing?

It's just people trying to continue to pile on to validate their own viewpoints, it's just human nature. They thought RIM was dead, so they search for things to put them down to validate their opinions, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. The L series (the release device, not the dev alphas) have been leaked in many photos and been sent to over 50 carriers, they are in use, of course the CEO would use one at a game, the cat is out of the bag about what it's going to look like.

It amuses me that a big part of the reason for the switch seems to be outages caused by RIM's brilliant 'single platform-wide point of failure' e-mail model, which for reasons I still to this day fail to understand, was long promoted as a BlackBerry advantage.

The government always makes great tech decisions as we all know. I'm sure the NTSB is equipping their (at most 400) employees with spare battery pack options for the iPhones, as you wouldn't want to run out of battery at a key time...seems more likely than a once a year outage of BIS, in which they could still text and call on Blackberry. And I'm sure it's more cost efficient once they add the license fee for Good or a similar MDM solution to replace BES, spare battery hacks to clunk onto the iPhone...not.

The government is run by people faced with the same choices as corporations and individuals.

RIM really can't offer state of the art phones, the only real question is if the government needs state of the art phones.

I would imagine the NTSB needs phones that you can change the battery when needed, have lower cost data plans, and don't break when you drop them, but that's just an un-educated outsider commenting. I'm sure the NTSB has better reasons than just wanting to be able to download more apps from an apps store? And the security thing, I'm sure they have that covered too. Unless they have some custom app the really need that is iOS only I don't see how they justify the decision. The trojan horse of BYOD is strong even if it isn't really BYOD as you say, what people want they get, even at tax payer expense.

I'm sure the NTSB has better reasons than just wanting to be able to download more apps from an apps store?

You do realize that the enterprise (which would trivially include NTSB) is exempt from using the App Store, right? That they can set up their own app "store" (aka distribution) just like they do with their PCs?

Maybe they expect that there is generally better application infrastructure out there for iOS. There will certainly be more developers available and people hate to actually have to train anyone these days.

BYOD isn't even an issue here; they are handing the phones out.

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and don't break when you drop them,

Apparently, this isn't as persuasive as you think. The exact reason wasn't specified, but the article specifically cites reliability as a prime issue for dumping them.

You can be pretty sure there was a serious evaluation and whatever its advantages in being dropped are, there must have been substantial other issues (like software reliability perhaps? Or maybe the drop survival isn't as good as you think) that tipped the scales the other way.

The government is run by people faced with the same choices as corporations and individuals.

RIM really can't offer state of the art phones, the only real question is if the government needs state of the art phones.

I would imagine the NTSB needs phones that you can change the battery when needed, have lower cost data plans, and don't break when you drop them, but that's just an un-educated outsider commenting. I'm sure the NTSB has better reasons than just wanting to be able to download more apps from an apps store? And the security thing, I'm sure they have that covered too. Unless they have some custom app the really need that is iOS only I don't see how they justify the decision. The trojan horse of BYOD is strong even if it isn't really BYOD as you say, what people want they get, even at tax payer expense.

Data plans are the same cost for iPhones/Androids, and in the past Blackberry to my knowledge has been more expensive (at least in the US, but I haven't looked in a long time). Plus, you get rid of all that proprietary BES which would save them quite a bit of money and just use ActiveSync. Battery life it seems they're addressing. As for the dropping, iPhone 5s are aluminum on the back. Maybe they just want their users to be satisfied with their phone, unlike Blackberry users.

I'm not sure of the security standards for the NTSB, but I would assume they require more than just vanilla ActiveSync? I may be wrong, in which case it would be cheaper to skip the BES server costs. But if they have to buy a third party tool like Good to manage their iPhones they are not saving money.

Keep in mind that these phones are going to be used as communication tools for work, not general purpose entertainment and communication devices. Having Hulu/Netflix on them doesn't matter. Being able to change the battery and withstand a drop should. I've bid and won on many government RFPs, they are slanted towards what the people in the department issuing it want to win, thus my comment about BYOD preference creeping into government procurement. The fact is that most people in the US who don't spend all their day emailing on their phone would prefer to use an iPhone than a current BB7 device. Thus the RFP/study/assessment ends up with the iPhone winning. That's just the way it is, and why RIM has to get consumers/workers to want to use their BB10 phones, the push is coming from employees/management now instead of top down from the IT department dictating what makes their life easier/more secure.

What it doesn't mean is that going with iPhone over Blackberry is better for the taxpayer.

Are you essentially saying these mass defections are corporate or government malfeasance?

LOL, that's a bit strong. I just question whether the requirements of the government issued phone go much beyond communications, in which case Blackberry is as good or better, and cheaper (if they supply Curves or Bold 9790s) for the majority of workers.

I don't discount the fact that if workers are happier with iPhones they are happier with their jobs, perks do have their place in both public and private enterprise. As long as the shortcomings of the iPhone don't get in the way of their job a couple extra $100 per year per employee for hardware and device management software is not a huge deal. So no, it's not malfeasance, just RIM getting their comeuppance in the corporate/.gov world for being so late bringing out phones that PEOPLE want to use, as opposed to what IT admins want workers to use for cost and security/device management reasons.